Arts Plus. On TV/Radio.

Child Welfare Mess Getting The `Eye' From 2 Cbs Outlets

April 20, 1994|By Steve Nidetz.

The child welfare mess in Chicago keeps getting messier. Now, both CBS and its Chicago radio affiliate, WBBM-AM 780, are taking aim at the situation.

"Eye to Eye with Connie Chung" (8 p.m. Thursday on WBBM-Ch. 2) gets into the act first with an investigation of Family First, a state agency built on good intentions but filled with bad results, including its involvement in the Joseph Wallace murder case.

"Somebody was talking about how really (messed-up) some of these programs are," said Susan Zirinsky, a senior producer for the CBS newsmagazine. "A person (producer) Patrick Wieland knew pointed him toward Chicago. Within days of this conversation, The New York Times ran an editorial, also talking about Chicago. So we started to nose around."

As CBS found out, even the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services had some doubts about Family First's effectiveness in helping troubled families stay together. DCFS consequently commissioned a study of its own program that verified the worst. "Even before the program began," reports Chung, "administrators knew `that the probability of child deaths would be higher' " than if the child and his abusive parent weren't in Family First.

It took the production team weeks, however, to piece the story together, according to Zirinsky. "We started at the end of the year," she said, "but had to keep putting it off because of other pressing stuff. Then all these pieces started coming out about child welfare. So we rushed in and finished it. We tried airing it two weeks ago, but it got bumped."

Part of Zirinsky's problems stemmed from participants who were "skittish" about appearing on camera. "We were missing two or three key elements," she said. "We didn't feel we had the goods. That's something we got fairly recently. Until you have the full goods, you dilute the impact of your story."

At WBBM Radio, 13 community leaders ranging from Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy (who also appears in the "Eye to Eye" piece) to former radical Bernardine Dohrn (now director of the Northwestern Law School Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center) have been asked to come up with one workable idea to fix the child welfare system. The series of 13 editorials, one each day, will begin airing Monday morning.

Casting call: For all you aspiring radio and TV types, the National Association of Broadcasters is holding its second regional career seminar Thursday and Friday at the Embassy Suites Hotel, 600 N. State St. Registration, at $25 for students and $50 for others, begins at 1 p.m. Wednesday. . . . America's Talking, a cable network scheduled to launch July 4, brings its open-audition contest to North Pier Friday through Sunday. The winner of the 10-city "Talk Search" receives a one-year, $75,000 contract to host a national talk show. "For the first time in television history," says network president Roger Ailes, "anyone in America will have the opportunity to become the next national talk-show star." And you thought it took a Rhodes Scholar.